The Yakshi of Kerala, the Spirit of a Wronged Woman
Kerala's White-Sari-clad Vampire
Her story is terror-evoking and awe-inspiring.
She is culturally tethered to the gender politics of the society in which she exists as a myth and lore.
The girls in a small region in south India (the Malayalam-speaking population) grew up listening to the terrifying Yakshi stories and assimilated from them, an odd feeling of empowerment.
The Yakshis in these stories are the spirits of women wronged and killed by men. A Yakshi kills men and completes her revenge, not only on the individual who wronged her but the whole bunch of ‘mankind’.
Her feet do not touch the earth when she walks. This is how you can know her for what she is.
She will wait for her victims in twilight, dawns and dusks, on the edges of dark nights.
She has long black hair that almost reaches her feet. Her lips are full and crimson, her eyelashes thick and black.
She waits on the lonely trails that lead through thick green vegetation or the barren hillocks where human habitation is nil.
She waits, always close to a wild palm tree, where she can take her victims; the tree will look like a grand castle to the poor souls hoodwinked to get there.
The palms grow on barren plains and rocky hillocks. They stick out their towering crown above the surrounding greenery just like sentinels of another world.
Though an illusion, the castle will be so lovely that men are lured there, following her like sheep. Their last thoughts will be of the wild orgy that they expect to undertake with this strange and enchanting woman.
Once they reached the top of the wild palm, she would drink their blood and eat their flesh. The teeth, bones, and hair of the poor victim would scatter below the tree.
There are no stories of a Yakshi killing a woman.
The act of seduction follows a predictable pattern, which can serve as a cue for the victim to initiate an escape, that is, run if he is in the right state of mind. Stories abound about how a few wise and holy men escaped her.
However, for the ordinary mortal male, the charm of a Yakshi is too intense to resist.
Her course of action to lure her victim is simple- She would wait by the side of a deserted pathway and ask the men who pass by for a betel chew.
Remember, these stories evolved when there was very little public or private transportation other than walking by foot and bullock carts.
Every man in those days, fashionably, had with them a bundle of the ingredients to make betel chews. The packet would include betel leaves, a small bottle containing lime paste, and raw or processed (sometimes sweetened) areca seeds.
Usually, they all would be wrapped neatly with a piece of banana leaf and the packet tied using a banana fibre extracted from the trunk.
Half a century back, all men in this region were profuse betel chewers. It was a popular after-meal condiment.
To mix the ingredients of the betel chew properly, smear the leaf with a tiny amount of lime paste, put the right quantity of the areca nut on the leaf, and wrap the leaf around the nut to make a perfect chew.
Excess lime paste, your tongue and mouth will be burnt. Excess areca nut, the chew will not give you the nice fragrant taste and your lips and mouth the deep red colouration. Betel-chew preparation proceeds like an elaborate ritual or art form.
The betel chew also has a sexual connotation.
Before proceeding to lovemaking, young couples would chew the betel mix, made sweet and exquisite with added jaggery and cardamom. The chew acted as a mouth freshener.
A lover preparing the perfect mixture of betel chew for his beloved on a moonlit night has been a poetic flourish that the region had in its literature of the late 19th and early 20th century.
In a popular movie, the story goes like this- A Yakshi forms a unique bond with a writer who lives to witness her revenge on the man who wronged her and, obviously, to tell her story for posterity. Another award-winning novel unfolded in a magical world of rituals. All kinds of spirits, including Yakshis, competed with each other to seduce the protagonist.
A renowned sculpture of Yakshi, created by a famous sculptor, sits in a garden on the flank of the picturesque Malampuzha dam in Kerala.
Some men with special powers could compel her with their magic. They would ask her to walk to a tree, any big tree.
Then, they would drive a nail right through her forehead into the tree trunk.
Once the nail is stuck deep in the tree trunk, the Yakshi is caught there for eternity, and she disappears.
It is a cruel way to catch her, and the man who does this must do proper penance or bear the curse.
There are popular stories about a Brahmin priest and a Catholic priest who were experts in trapping and even destroying Yakshis.
If, by mistake, someone pulls out the nail from the tree trunk, the Yakshi is released. Fascinated by these stories, kids checked tree trunks to see if a Yakshi was trapped in them.
Once Kerala’s villages had electricity, in the early 1970s, Yakshi became endangered and extinct.
Her myth faded in the strong lights emanating from electric street lamps. There was no darkness left for her to hide.
Modernity was seeping in. Pedestrians began to keep powerful pocket torches with them. The village and small town administrations erected electric lamp posts that flooded the surroundings with light.
The wild palm also met an equally pathetic fate. Population pressures and growing real estate demand on land in this small state led to all barren lands being converted to housing plots or commercial properties. Most of the wild palms fell to the axe of the woodcutter.
The population grew, and a construction boom ensued; all the remaining barren hillocks were transformed into granite quarries.
And who will have betel chew these days!! It is an extinct habit still kept alive by a handful of grandmas and grandpas, too old to walk the lonely village paths in magical dusks.
Globalisation imported Western vampires into Indian culture en masse, werewolves too. OTT platforms air so many Hollywood movies and TV series about them. Today's kids do not nag their grandparents with a demand to tell a story. Instead, they watch OTT.
They will never know the spine-chilling stories of Yakshi.
The vampires and werewolves give them the nightmares that the Yakshis rightfully own.
Yakshi is currently a cultural outcast.
One of the most powerful cultural deterrents against gender violence thus has disappeared.
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